Just to be precise about the debate...i would like this debate to be on the kalam argument, since i believe it to be the most convincing argument (at least to me). Another reason i would like to discuss this argument is because i am currently starting my own "apologetic workbook", and the kalam is the first one that i am working on. And after that i will move on to the other arguments. I have not read any of the previous discussing involving that argument, as im sure i will eventually. If my opponent will agree to this debate shortly afterwards, and we can get it started ASAP.

No doubt i sure can. Lets say, hypothetically, that i am an omniscience human being. And, i take my son to a toy store, and i tell him to get whatever he wants, Daddy will pay for it. And my son proceeds to get whatever he wants. Now my question to you is, Despite the fact that i know that my son will get a Xbox 360, does that in ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, stop my son from FREELY choosing what he wants? I think the answer is obviously no. My son can freely walk throughout the store and get whatever he wants, despite whether i know what will get, or not. Foreknowledge does not contradict free will.

Do you know the answer your son will choose because of:

A. A logical series of cause and effect which you can map and arrive to the answer for.

B. You have 'travelled' through time in a way that you can see or have seen the future, meaning that time now becomes a pattern of unchangeable logical series of cause and effect events.

C. Magic.

If your answer is 'magic' then we don't even need to discuss the logical merits of anything because logic then has no meaning in this context.

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God, in his omniscience, knows exactly what we will do, and he is not surprised by anything. How can you be surprised about something you already know? God, in his ominscience, also knows what will happen if we DONT do something. The best example i ever seen that illustrates both God's omniscience and Gods omnipresence, was if you draw a 10in horizontal line on a piece of paper, with an arrow on each end of the line, the line on the left represents the past, and the one on the right represents the future, and place a dot in the middle of the line and that will represent the present. Now on that same sheet of paper, draw some eyes at the top, with the eyes looking down at the line. The eyes can see the past, present, and future. I think thats a decent example.

Are we separate from the line?

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But my conclusion is Foreknowledge does not contradict free will.

Let's see if you can answer with anything more then 'magic'.

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

From one US military veteran to another -- welcome to this forum. I retired from the Air Force six years ago. While we don't share similar theological views, you and I at least share a common bond of military service to this country. Let that be a cause of mutual respect between us.

As for your debate, understand that we've recently done this with a poster called Fran who used WLC's arguments to try to convince us that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and that this supposed resurrection proves that God exists. Fran tried to show this to us all during three attempts that he has carried out over the last year or so. He failed each time, and he's currently on some kind of hiatus from here, something he does every time he fails to prove his point. Maybe he'll return to lend you his support.

You didn't mince words in your introduction, but I caution you to not enter so boldly into the debate you may encounter here. While you feel you're in the superior position, your opposition here has a different view. It's likely that this debate will end as so many have before, with neither side swayed enough to alter their views. Part of that probably stems from stubbornness, but for nonbelievers, much of that comes from the inability of theists to put forth reliable and testable evidence to support their views about deities. Your greatest disadvantage in this debate will be the complete lack of physical evidence that reliably points to the existence of at least one deity. That makes all arguments for deities merely philosophical exercises that can, at best, serve to convince audience members who want to believe in deities, but routinely fail to compel skeptics to accept that a god exists. Perhaps you'll be the maverick who comes up with something new that is so compelling that we of reasonable minds can no longer accept our atheism. Or perhaps not. If you stick to WLC's line of reasoning, you're not that maverick.

With that said, I look forward to what you have to offer.

Jazzman

I would like to thank you for your service as well Sir. Hopefully i can get the patience that you had, and RETIRE also lol. The kalam argument is back up by the scientific evidence that supports the universe having a beginning, and the philosophical arguments that you referred to echos the scientific evidence.

Lets say, hypothetically, that i am an omniscience human being. And, i take my son to a toy store, and i tell him to get whatever he wants, Daddy will pay for it. And my son proceeds to get whatever he wants. Now my question to you is, Despite the fact that i know that my son will get a Xbox 360, does that in ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, stop my son from FREELY choosing what he wants?

So...you can predict that there positively WILL NOT be a fire in the store, and everyone will have to exit before your son makes his choice? Or an earthquake won't occur? Or that you or your son won't be injured or taken ill and have to go to the hospital. Or the store won't be robbed? Or your wife won't call with a family emergency that requires you to go home immediately? Or that something didn't get screwed up with your credit card account, and your card gets rejected? Or the power goes out unexpectedly in the store, and they can't run the cash registers? Or the store is sold out of Xbox 360 today?

If anything of those things happened then your prediction that your son will be leaving with an Xbox 360 would be WRONG. But, I'm assuming, you're saying that god WOULD know about a robbery, or whatever. God would really KNOW whether your son would walk out with the Xbox 360; you're only making a good guess. Your analogy is not apt compared to omniscience as it's attributed to god--unless you're attributing only that level of "making good guesses" to god--but that would mean he could be surprised, and sometimes be wrong.

The kalam argument is back up by the scientific evidence that supports the universe having a beginning, and the philosophical arguments that you referred to echos the scientific evidence.

Scientific evidence confirms our universe had a beginning, but that evidence doesn't tell us what that cause was.

Your burden will be to show that the cause was the deity you worship. Science won't help you there. Philosophy won't help you, either, because philosophical arguments can't prove anything; they exist to illuminate possibilities. You can use a philosophical argument to convince someone that your view is correct, but that's a far cry from actually proving your position to be correct.

You've chosen a monumental task in offering to debate the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I hope you can present something we haven't heard before.

Welcome to the Forum, Majesty. I'm looking forward to the debate. If you go to the "Mailbag" here, you'll see the caliber of believers we usually get here and, very likely, facepalm repeatedly before graduating to headdesk. So please don't take it as an insult when I say that I hope you will be able to produce at least one argument that will make me think, "You know, you might have something there..." or "Well, I disagree, but I grant that your belief system is plausible." I'm not quite optimistic enough to expect something that'll persuade me to go "Hey, you're right! Jesus, will you be my Lord and Savior?" because I think there is a towering mountain of evidence against literalist "Bible-believing" Christianity. But, we'll see, won't we?

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"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

No doubt i sure can. Lets say, hypothetically, that i am an omniscience human being. And, i take my son to a toy store, and i tell him to get whatever he wants, Daddy will pay for it. And my son proceeds to get whatever he wants. Now my question to you is, Despite the fact that i know that my son will get a Xbox 360, does that in ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, stop my son from FREELY choosing what he wants? I think the answer is obviously no. My son can freely walk throughout the store and get whatever he wants, despite whether i know what will get, or not. Foreknowledge does not contradict free will.

Oh, and before we all get lured into a debate on omniscience vs. free will, we should be discussing things like the debate format and the title resolution ("God Exists" "The Kalam Cosmological Argument Validates Theistic Belief" or some such), and the like?

Also, Majesty, I do have to commend your courage in being willing to be ganged up on. Unfortunately, I can't think of any Christians here that I could benevolently wish upon you as an ally except maybe Fran, but his attendance has proven to be rather spotty. Just curious, would you object to the idea of me posting a devil's advocate post if I see an atheist argument I consider to be open to rebuttal, just to even things out a little?

For example, I don't really think the arguments being given about omniscience vs. free will here are very strong. Imagine I'm a time-traveler from Atlantis. I come here to the 21st Century and read a history book. There, I discover that a chap named Napoleon will launch an invasion of Russia that will result in the defeat of his regime. I find this interesting, so I use my Sneak-O-Scope to invisibly watch the great French general as he pores over his maps, pacing back and forth weighing his decision. Apart from some multiverse theory (which has not entered into discussion), I would know what decision he's going to make before he does. Does this mean Napoleon does not have free will? From our future perspective, we know what decision he'll make. Someone looking back at me from a future perspective of a year from now knows about the arguments I'll choose to use in this debate. Does this mean I have no free will?

If we grant a paranormal ability like time travel, working precognition or divine omniscience, then the entity possessing it does not need to be embedded in the relative future (as we are compared to Napoleon) in order to know what choices will be made. As far as I can tell, this means we must either reject free will or accept that someone else's knowledge of what choice will be made is compatible with free will in the person doing the choosing.

However, I don't think that genuine human free will would relieve Yahweh or moral responsibility for the choices humans would/will make, if he has inerrant foresight of what those choices will be before he decides to create humans, but that's another argument.

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"The question of whether atheists are, you know, right, typically gets sidestepped in favor of what is apparently the much more compelling question of whether atheists are jerks."

Imagine I'm a time-traveler from Atlantis. I come here to the 21st Century and read a history book. There, I discover that a chap named Napoleon will launch an invasion of Russia that will result in the defeat of his regime. I find this interesting, so I use my Sneak-O-Scope to invisibly watch the great French general as he pores over his maps, pacing back and forth weighing his decision. Apart from some multiverse theory (which has not entered into discussion), I would know what decision he's going to make before he does. Does this mean Napoleon does not have free will? From our future perspective, we know what decision he'll make. Someone looking back at me from a future perspective of a year from now knows about the arguments I'll choose to use in this debate. Does this mean I have no free will?

Well, indeed, this argument doesn't work for me because I think we in fact do NOT possess free will[1]. I actually have less a problem with the omniscient being part (ignoring the existence of the being itself) than I have with the free will part.

But no one has suggested time travel in the PAST to address the issue of free will. Books of history are easy to come by; books describing the future are the interesting ones.

Theological fatalism is the default position accepted by philosophers[2]--from which exceptions have to be demonstrated.

From our future perspective, we know what decision he'll make. Someone looking back at me from a future perspective of a year from now knows about the arguments I'll choose to use in this debate. Does this mean I have no free will?

I've thought about this some more. It's true, if god lives "outside" of time (or in the "infinite" or relevant future) then he COULD know exactly what we would do, and we COULD still have free will (assuming that free will is possible)...

But there's a subtlety here: He could only know by OBSERVING the events.[1] That's different from knowing because he simply "knows." In the first case he's just a time traveller like anyone else--his special quality isn't really omniscience, per se, it's the ability to transcend time. In the second case, he's really "omniscient." He doesn't HAVE to examine future events and then claim he knows what will happen, he knows BEFORE they happen (or however you want to describe it).

Those who claim omniscience for god don't wish to say he's merely a time traveller, they wish to say that he knows all things "from the beginning." And saying that says that everything is predictable FROM IT'S STARTING QUALITIES, and saying THAT means there's no free will.

Isaiah 46:10 I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

1. I guess im gonna have to start praticing my quoting. I tried the "quote forum", it worked on there, but then when i tried to quote on the main forum, it just didnt come out right. As soon as i get the quoting up to par, we can get started.

2. Some of your arguments are very easy to refute. I forgot the guys name, but the air force retiree, stated that the kalam doesn't state what the first cause was. Well, in my arguments i will present reasons to believe that the first cause is PERSONAL, which shouldnt be a problem.

3. I would talk more in depth about free will at another time, and i can tell that should be an interesting subject as well.

4. I noticed some other individuals in here want to participate in the debate as well. I am skeptical about this, because correct me if im wrong, that would mean i would have to respond to many different people, and that will kinda throw me off. I like to be locked in on one person, maybe two. I would love to debate any one of you other people in here after my victor over KC.

5. I should be presenting my arguments for the existence of God tomorrow. I will be arguing in favor of the kalam argument, and KC has agreed to debate me on that issue. KC, just so you know.......i will be using the popular arguments based on...

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause2. The universe exist3. Therefore, the universe has a cause

There you go, my arguments will be on the forum tomorrow. So stay tuned.

1. I guess im gonna have to start praticing my quoting. I tried the "quote forum", it worked on there, but then when i tried to quote on the main forum, it just didnt come out right. As soon as i get the quoting up to par, we can get started.

Basically just press the 'quote' link in the upper right hand corner of what you want to quote (it has this icon next to it .

The quote can be edited. Just edit out whatever is in between the quote brackets you don't want to quote (the quote brackets are the

You can copy/paste what you want to quote. TO do this, copy/paste like you would anything else, press this button above the smilies, . That will bring up the quote brackets mentioned earlier. Paste what you want to quote in between the brackets.

If you do this method, it's best to tell who you are quoting. THis can be done by adding the word 'author' then the equal sign then the person you are quoting to the first set of brackets, so it looks like this

3. There's an ongoing discussion about it, created by RobertHills. It's called "God doesn't believe in amputees, etc". You can join it if you want. Let's discuss it there.

4. It seems that, from the participating members post by a moderator, only two people from the site are participating in the debate...? Oh well. If there're more than three participating from this side, count me out.